The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

—Psalm 19:1-2

If I had to pick a thesis statement for my writing as a whole, it would be that God is everywhere. Not in a God-is-literally-this-blade-of-grass kind of way, but I do believe that His DNA is intricately woven throughout all of creation like Easter eggs full of joy and love just waiting to be found. 

We can find His glory in the people around us and we can get to know a little about God’s love for us when we love each other. We can see His holiness and justice in the moral code the majority of humanity shares. We can discover more about Him through the work He has given each of us to do. And this week, we’re going to look a little more closely at what we can learn about God from the natural world around us, according to the Bible.

Jewish teaching often made use of natural images and stories to make a point, so it’s not a surprise that nature makes its way into biblical teaching. Because of this, we’re going to look at several instances where the Bible uses nature as a reference for a lesson about God. As we go through them, I encourage you to pull out your Bible and look at these passages in their entirety. 

Psalm 42:1—In my Bible, Psalm 42 is titled “Thirsting for God in Trouble and Exile,” and the psalm begins with the image of a deer panting for water in a severe drought. It’s a Maskil, which refers to a psalm meant to instruct the people, and it delivers a potent image of our desperate need for God and what our response should be when we meet with times of trouble—we should fully lean into that desperate need for God because He is faithful to provide.

Often deer are able to get most of the water they need from the plants they eat, but when a drought comes, they begin to feel their need. It’s when these difficult times come that they begin to actively seek out a water source instead, and that is exactly what we should do when things get difficult—seek out our source of Living Water.

Matthew 6:25-34—This passage has long been one of my favorites because when I read it, I feel God’s comfort. In this passage, Jesus encourages us not to worry or be anxious using two different illustrations—birds and flowers. Both illustrations are so simple, but at the same time, they can be incredibly challenging to our human hearts which are so prone to worry.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a worried bird or an anxious flower. When we look at God’s creation, we can see how good and faithful He has been to provide. Whether it’s the largest animal on the planet or the flowers in a field, God has not forgotten them and He has not ceased to care for them. Not only does this demonstrate how meticulously God cares and provides for all of His creation, us included, but the vastness of the task also puts His wisdom and power on display. 

John 12:24-26—This verse is Jesus’s response when Philip and Andrew tell Him there are some Greeks who wish to speak to Him. The response seems a little strange. Philip and Andrew tell Jesus some foreign men want to speak to Him and suddenly He starts talking about seeds and death, but there are several important lessons we can learn from the death of a seed. 

Jesus is using the illustration of a seed dying to tell His disciples that sacrifice will be necessary, and of course, we can see that the same principle will apply to Jesus Himself—He will have to die before salvation can spread to the nations. But there is something else we can learn from the death of a seed. 

When I look at this illustration, I can’t help but think that this has been part of the design of creation all along. At least since the fall, and maybe since the very beginning, a seed had to be buried and split open for something new and better to grow from it. To me that says that sacrificing Himself to save us was never a plan B. It wasn’t something He had to debate about for thousands of years. It was a decision already made when He designed seeds in the beginning, and that action, that choice shouts of His love for us.

It’s amazing what God can teach us about Himself through the masterpiece of creation, but I don’t want us to make the mistake of thinking that the only lessons we can learn from creation are found in Scripture. There is much we can learn from these passages, but I also believe that if we approach the wonderful creation God made for us with open eyes and the expectation that He will reveal Himself, we will find what we are looking for. So maybe it’s time we take a walk in a garden and see what…or Who we find!